This study proposes to explain the puzzling identities of the six figures standing on Nicola's pulpit through a fresh survey of the whole monument. Reasons are offered to show that the Presentation in the Temple, the center scene of the five, is the theme on which the whole focuses. Its unique double image of Simeon refers to his two speeches, about Christ's recent birth and future redemption of man, and the six statues support these references. The unique hexagonal pulpit claims importance for the Baptistery as another temple where we enter the church.

HANA ŠEDINOVÁ - The Precious Stones of Heavenly Jerusalem in the Medieval Book Illustration and Their Comparison with the Wall Incrustation in St. Wenceslas Chapel (pp. 31—47)

The art historians have traditionally considered St. Wenceslas Chapel of St. Vitus' Cathedral in Prague Castle the image of Heavenly Jerusalem. This theory proved legitimate also in the study discussing the symbolism of the precious stones incrustation adorning the cycle of paintings of the Redemption story in the lower part of all the chapel walls. The identification of precious stones with Christ, with the saints and martyrs does not, however, exclude the possibility that the chapel was meant as a reliquary. It is therefore necessary to search for new parallels in medieval literature and art to the precious stones adorning the chapel to be able to endorse the former or the latter theory, or, eventually, look for a new explanation.

Suppose we prefer to regard the chapel as an image of Heavenly Jerusalem; this presumption offers a comparison with the depictions of the precious stones on Heavenly Jerusalem in medieval book painting, i.e. the art discipline most closely connected with written tradition.

Not all the illustrations of Heavenly Jerusalem represent the precious stones. If they do, Heavenly Jerusalem is decorated either with the twelve stones mentioned in the Revelation (or with their names), or with a number of stones covering the area of the city and not forming any pattern or motif. In the chapel we do not find twelve panels cut out of twelve different precious stones, but a number of stone discs of mere three varieties. Moreover, only exceptionally do the precious stones discs not form a particular shape on the walls of the chapel; mostly they are set in the shape of a cross.

Same as we do not find the image of a cross in the medieval illuminations, we do not see any picture resembling the passion cycle in St. Wenceslas Chapel in any way. This study, therefore, does not lead us to the final conclusion con­cerning the conception of the chapel, since the possibility of it being a reliquary remains open.

MAURO LUCCO - A New Portrait by Raphael and Its Historical Context (pp. 49—73)

A hitherto unknown picture on panel is presented here, and its attribution to the young Raphael, about 1507, is put for­ward, on the basis of two ancient copies of the picture and of an ancient inscription. The inscription at the back reveals the identity of the sitter, Costanza Fregoso. She is mentioned in Baldassarre Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, and was one of the leading dames at the Urbino Court at the end of the year 1506. Newly produced archival research gives some more information about her life and about the story of the picture.

Costanza Fregoso had been for a while the lover of Pietro Bembo, who was at Urbino Court between the last months of 1506 and the last months of 1507. As it is well known, Bembo was a personal friend to Raphael. The portrait is identified here as a picture given to Bembo by Costanza as a token of love, in exchange for a small portrait of Bembo himself, recorded by Michiel to have been done in 1507, and now lost. When their love affair came to an end and the portraits were sent back to the respective sitters, after Costanza Fregoso's marriage in 1509, she had the background of her portrait radically changed by a North Italian painter, about 1515—1520. The original background can be clearly seen in infra-red reflectography. It is perfectly consistent with Raphael's style of about 1507, with the style of the portrait itself, as well as with the background visible on the oldest copy, datable about 1510—1515. A campaign of X-rays and infra-red reflectography has been carried out on the picture. It revealed existence of a now lost cartoon, transferred by spolvero, and of many pentimenti - which makes it clear that we are looking at an original by Raphael, from about 1507, and not at a copy.

The last proposal is that a well known pen sketch by Raphael in the Louvre is rather related to this picture than to the Dame with the Unicorn in the Borghese Gallery, as it is usually stated.

ALFRED ACRES - Rogier van der Weyden's Painted Texts (pp. 75—109)

This essay considers the unusual variety of ways in which Rogier van der Weyden conceived text as a lively agent of pictorial meaning. It represents a new approach not only to the prob­lem of interpreting this artist's work (which has most often been analyzed for matters of style, attribution, and patronage), but also to fundamental dynamics of text and image in fifteenth-century panel painting. Among these exceptionally pliable manipulations of text both in form and content, which are compared selectively to Eyckian counterparts, there emerges a distinctive impulse toward cultivating an observer's role in the creation of meaning.

Andrea Mantegna, working in the Mantuan court of Francesco and Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, executed a simulated bronze portrait of Dido, legendary queen of Carthage, which seems to belie the traditional image of the lover who took her own life in desperation when abandoned by Aeneas. This work has received little scholarly attention as interpretations have always been inextricably linked with Virgil's portrayal of the tragic heroine in the Aeneid.

In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, however, a second version of Dido's life and death was widely acknowledged. This article explores the hypothesis that Mantegna's heroine died upholding her principles rather than as a result of having compromised them.

Like other enigmatic paintings of the Renaissance, the Louvre's Concert Champêtre has been variously interpreted as either allegory or , and most recently (Christiane Joost­Gaugier, 1999) as a sentimental tribute to Giorgione by Titian by completing an unfinished work of his late lamented teacher and friend. This paper identifies two specific sources of literary inspiration for the figures and setting of the painting in the Augustan poets Horace and Sextus Propertius, and in woodcut illustrations from contemporary printed editions of their works, chosen per­haps by an unknown committente. The Muse with the flute is identified here (in agreement with E. Motzkin) as Horace's Euterpe (Ode 1.1); the other, holding the gleaming pitcher of water and wearing a trailing diadem and a ring, as Calliope, Horace's 'Queen' of Muses (Ode 3.4). Those two musicians, then, the elegant Propertius (with the lute and garbed in red, left) and Horace (the plainer rustic, right) are engaged in a friendly competition as described in Horace's Epistle 2.2 (the unnamed elegist there was identified in the Renaissance as Propertius). The goatherd with a bagpipe (background, right) represents Horace's Faunus, here to visit the Sabine farm from his beloved Arcadia (as the poet boasts in Ode 1.17) and piping to the goats on the slopes of Lucretilis. Calliope stands at the well preparing to consecrate her poet with sacred water as in Propertius 3.3, but the elegist's Hippocrene has been transformed here into Horace's Bandusian spring, with its glassy waters and shading ilex (Ode 3.13). At the far right an ilex shades the figure of Faunus as well. The Sabine landscape Horace loved, with its ilexes, spring, villa, neighbouring towns, hills,even perhaps Tivoli and the River Aniene in the background, is imaginatively recreated by the artist.

RUDOLPH KUHN - On the History and Analysis of Composition as Method and as Topic (pp. 133—150)

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part the specific place of the analysis of composition, among other methods of art history, is briefly discussed. In addition the rapid development of the theory of composition between the years of 1400 and 1550 is outlined, mainly focusing on the progressions made by Cennino Cennini, Leon Battista Alberti, Lionardo da Vinci, and, for example, Ludovico Dolce. In the second part the compositions of two paintings dated from two different periods Raphaels Fire in the Borgo and Picassos Guernica are analysed, contrasted and compared. Concomitantly, an attempt will be made in order to demonstrate, what could be gained  according to the authors opinion  by using the method of analysis of composition. Therefore, this analysis will be done carefully by paying attention to each single step. The aim of the analysis is firstly to clarify the compositions and secondly to identify the specific themes of the paintings. Surprisingly, despite the obvious discrepancies between the two paintings, there are several compositional similarities, which might hint at the possibility that Picasso had this specific work of Raphael before his eyes and even responded to it.

A broad overview sums up the personality and artistic evolution of Abraham Bloemaert, comparing and contrasting him with Cornel is van Haarlem, the brilliant competitor and at times model of his early maturity, and with Bloemaert's foremost pupil Honthorst, on both of whom monographs have recently appeared. A dozen unknown or little known paintings are discussed: Cupid and Psyche, tentatively ascribed to Bloemaert as his probable earliest known work, several char­acteristic mannerist works from the 1590s (two Bacchus, Cain Slaying Abel), Moses Striking the Rock of 1611, two landscapes of nearly the same date, and a late masterpiece of the early 1630s, Angelica and Medoro.

MARIA GORDON-SMITH - The influence of Jean Pillement on French and English Decorative Arts. Part One (pp. 171—196)

Jean Pillement is generally regarded as the heir to Watteau and Boucher in the field of rococo chinoiseries. He went further, to become a leading exponent of the genre, the most prolific and successful designer of patterns for the decorative arts of his times whose ornaments were adopted by countless artistic manufactories. The reasons for his remarkable popularity were twofold. The first was his talent as an artist of unbridled fantasy, imagination and spirit which breathed into his ebullient microcosm of would-be Orientals. The second was his extensive propagation of published engravings in the eighteenth century, thanks to which Pillement's designs could potentially reach any artist or craftsman in need of a model. This two-part essay describes and illustrates Pillement's distinguishing imprint upon representative fields of applied arts.

Few examples of modern painting provoke as many passionate discussions and disputes as Rembrandt's Lisowczyk, which is known under the title "The Polish Rider" and with such a label exhibited in the Frick Gallery in New York. In 1944 Julius S. Held, outstanding American art scholar published his treatise in Art Bulletin in which he admitted Rembrandt's authorship of the painting but refused to perceive the rider as Polish. He saw the rider as an allegorical figure of the Christian knight (Miles Christianus). Zdzisław Żygulski, Jr., Cracow art historian contested this opinion. He carried out a detailed analysis of the costume,arms and riding style of the youth and came to the conclusion that Rembrandt could not base his work on any iconographic material, e.g. della Bella's etching, but around the year 1655 must have had a real Polish rider for a model. In the subsequent years there was published a number of different articles by Dutch, English, American, German and Polish scholars. They recognized the Polish character of the rider but reflected on his identity, pondering whether he was a portrait of a real or imaginary Pole or an allegorical figure. The critical moment came in 1984 when Joshua Bruyn, member of the Rembrandt Research Project, which was formed to redefine Rembrandt's oeuvre, called in question Rembrandt's author­ship of the painting, suggesting that it should be ascribed to Willem Drost. His opinion was shocking and it sparked off a serious objection, most strongly expressed in Anthony Bailey's book "Responses to Rembrandt. Who painted the Polish Rider?" (New York, 1993). The painting was examined again. This time the RRP team was headed by Ernst van de Wetering, the Project's chairman. As a result of this research Rembrandt's authorship was confirmed and a suggestion was made that the painting bore traces of later additions painted by someone else's hand. The former identification of the rider as a Pole was recognized by the team. And so it was by Julius S. Held in the interview that Bailey had with him. The painting has always been a source of inspiration for Polish artists, e.g. Juliusz Kossak in the 19th c. and Jan Lebenstein in the 20th c.

WALTER LIEDTKE - The Study of Dutch Art in America (pp. 207—220)

The study of 17th-century Dutch art in America is remarkable for its variety and abundance. This reflects the nature of American universities and museums. Interest in the subject, however, is much older, going back to the American Revolution when analogies between America and the Dutch republic were drawn. In the 19th century many American writers compared the supposedly Protestant democracy of Holland with that of the United States. Dutch art was collected steadily from about 1800 onward and often served as models for American painters. The author reviews the most influential scholars of Dutch art in America and cites numerous publications and other contributions to the field.